MAINGEAR Launches the SPARK Small Form Factor Gaming PC

MAINGEAR, an award-winning PC system builder offering custom desktops, notebooks, and workstations has launched their perfect living room PC solution with the new SPARK, winner of Popular Science Product of the Future award, CES 2014. Packed with performance and energy saving features from AMD the SPARK is the ultimate small form factor portable solution for gamers and PC enthusiasts alike.

Tiny Footprint
MAINGEAR's SPARK offers a powerful small form factor PC that weighs less than one pound and can fit in the palm of your hand. With a tiny footprint measuring 4.5" wide, 4.23" deep, and 2.34" tall, it is the smallest, lightest, and most versatile gaming PC solution MAINGEAR has ever offered. The MAINGEAR SPARK PC will be offered in the iconic red and black MAINGEAR colors and can easily be placed in a living room environment without taking up a large amount of space. It is also extremely portable, and makes a great LAN party or dorm-room PC.

Power Packed
The MAINGEAR SPARK utilizes the 4-core AMD A8-5557M APU with a Frequency of 2.1 GHz and Turbo Frequency of 3.1 GHz. It is an accelerated desktop processor that combines the power of a multicore CPU with AMD Radeon graphics, all in one energy-efficient chip. The SPARK also sports the AMD Radeon R9 M275X GDDR5 2 GB discrete graphics card, designed to push the boundaries of DirectX 11 gaming and is DirectX 12 ready. Utilizing AMD MANTLE API to unlock performance and image quality, making it a top choice for gamers. It's a powerful combination of immersive features and energy-saving performance for games, applications, and entertainment.

The SPARK has the speed and storage enthusiasts look for in a desktop PC, with up to 16 GB of 1600 MHz memory, four USB 3.0 ports that offer 10X super speed, an mSATA slot that supports an SSD up to 512 GB, and a 2.5" HDD tray supporting SATA III 6 Gb/s. Connectivity won't be a problem either, with the unique high end Wi-Fi module the SPARK features the next generation of WiFi with 802.11ac and Bluetooth 4.0, providing the fastest lag-free gaming experience. Gamers can also get the full big screen PC gaming experience with HDMI and DisplayPort that can offer 2 displays simultaneously.

Options
With the option to be customized without the Microsoft Windows operating system, it gives customers the freedom to install Linux or Valve's SteamOS (currently in Beta). Featuring customizable components such as memory and storage, the SPARK is a versatile small and powerful PC. It will offer peripherals including an XBOX PC wireless controller, and a TV kit that includes a networked cable card tuner and remote for the perfect living room setup to play games or enjoy entertainment.

"The AMD A8-5575M CPU and the AMD Radeon R9 M275X GPU are a perfect fit for MAINGEAR's SPARK solution," said Jay Marsden, Product Marketing Manager for AMD Mobile Graphics at AMD. "Gamers will love the performance and power saving features of the AMD solution in a tiny form factor that can fit just about anywhere."

"The SPARK is an extremely small and powerful gaming box that will make gamers think twice about small form factor performance." said Wallace Santos, CEO and founder of MAINGEAR "Building what we think is a great performing tiny PC with tons of storage for games and entertainment, this is the best PC to complete your home entertainment system."

The MAINGEAR SPARK is now available starting at $699 (with No OS) and offers any four free games from AMD's Reward program. All MAINGEAR products are custom built and supported in the USA and offer one to three year warranties on all products. For more information on the SPARK go to www.maingear.com/spark.

interesting, the gpu is about 1/4 of a R9 290 so R7 250X specs, Not a power house but considering the current mobile gpu king the Nvidia GTX 880m is 900$ for the card alone it's not bad graphics for a complete rig under 700$.

Hopefully future iterations are able to get up to the higher end mobile gpu's. But even the R9 M290X is 600$ at this point so that may be a while.

It's very simple - you let it throttle to 50% after 1 minute of testing becuase it can't take the heat.
A smart move from GIGABYTE would be using the maxwell GTX 750 ti GPU. Starting point will be lower, but post-throttle there's no doubt it will be faster.

It's very simple - you let it throttle to 50% after 1 minute of testing becuase it can't take the heat.
A smart move from GIGABYTE would be using the maxwell GTX 750 ti GPU. Starting point will be lower, but post-throttle there's no doubt it will be faster.